NJ Appellate Court Confirms the Power of the LRHL -Redeveloper Designation Required for Site Plan Review

In Applied Monroe Lender, LLC v. City of Hoboken Planning Board and City of Hoboken, Docket No.
A-3048-15T3 (App. Div. 2019), an unreported decision of the Appellate Division, land use practitioners
are reminded of the power of the Local Redevelopment and Housing Law ( “LRHL”), N.J.S.A. 40A:12A
et seq. The appellate court confirmed that the Hoboken Planning Board was not required to hear a site
plan application for a property in a designated redevelopment area where the applicant had not first
obtained a designation as a “Redeveloper” from the city. The lesson from this case is that the LRHL
grants New Jersey municipalities strong control of both the process of redevelopment as well and the type
of redevelopment in their communities. Developers who ignore, or are ill-advised, on the specifics of the
process of redevelopment do so at their peril. The LRHL grants broad powers to municipalities and the
courts have repeatedly held that municipal actions under this law should be liberally construed in favor of
the municipality.

The plaintiff/applicant in this case sued to have its site plan application deemed complete for failure of
the Planning Board to act on the application within 45 days, as required by the Municipal Land Use Law
(“MLUL”) N.J.S.A. 40:55D-10.3. The Planning Board argued that the site plan application was not
complete without the applicant obtaining a designation as Redeveloper from the city, even though the
designation was not required on the site plan application check list. The courts agreed with the Planning
Board and deferred to the process for redevelopment established by the city under the LRHL. The MLUL
provision granting automatic completeness approval was not enough to overcome the failure of the
applicant to comply with the city’s established LRHL process.

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